'Surging through exits when the bell goes' explores the tension between closed systems like schools, and the placelessness of online systems, translating a design-led research project, originally materialising as a publication. It examines how digital infrastructures aestheticise and normalise control as care in schools, shaping the hidden curriculum through platforms, interfaces and everyday design cues.
Developed as a publication, the artist’s research moves through the physical and digital school, tracing how design mediates control. It is the artefact of a design-led, visual, and speculative study that examines how digital infrastructures aestheticise and normalise compliance, revealing the hidden architectures of schooling in the age of data.
Please join us to celebrate the opening of this exhibition at First Site Gallery, 5– 7pm, Wednesday 8 April.
Hilary Dodd is a communication designer working across print, spatial and visual communication. With a background in visual art, she works through site-responsive, photographic and narrative strategies to connect intimate or everyday experiences to broader cultural and institutional contexts.
Alongside her practice, Dodd has worked as a teacher across educational institutions and museums. This experience informs her interest in the translation of complex ideas, audience engagement, interpretation, and how design shapes learning and participation. She holds a Master of Communication Design from RMIT University, a Master of Teaching from the University of Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts.
Her work has been recognised through institutional exhibitions and national design awards, including the Australian Graphic Design Association.
Image: Hilary Dodd, image from 'Aesthetics of the Not-So-Hidden Curriculum (in the age of data)', 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.
11am - 5pm Tuesday to Friday
Closed on public holidays
'Surging through exits when the bell goes' is a design-led research project that examines how the aesthetics of high school environments and digital platforms shape the hidden curriculum of contemporary education. It traces how physical architectures of control have evolved into the visual and behavioural architectures of digital systems, focusing on behaviour monitoring systems.
'Inheritance' is an immersive installation that transforms everyday materials into vessels of memory, care and connection. Through fragile yet grounded forms made from broken gum tree branches, turmeric and handwoven Bangladeshi Khadi, the work explores how making can hold and pass on inherited stories across generations and geographies.
'Steel Karkade' showcases the multifaceted experiences of Black women in the diaspora, as well as the artist’s South Sudanese heritage. For her, the livelihoods and narratives of her ancestors and the Black women who came before her are significantly underrepresented and unwritten; her practice endeavours to bring light and permanence to their stories and cultural history.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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